Last Tango in Buenos Aires

Eco-Patagonia

We in England have a tendency to hop swiftly onto bandwagons, especially if they are driven by the likes of Posh Spice. So when the whole Eco-marketing ploy went into operation, I went into reverse. I had always, just naturally out of common-sense respect for the Earth, re-used and recyled. What is the point of paying good money for ECO-Goods while wasting thousands of gallons of treated water to flush a little pee-pee?

 Something about Patagonia has got me on a bandwagon now. I did happen to see Al Gore's film 'An Inconvenient Truth' just before travelling and maybe his vivid depiction of retreating glaciares has contributed to my sense of injustice. The sight of Lago Nunez, the bird sanctuary in El Calafate, currently underwater from the melted glaciar was awakening.

 

Human beings have lost not only their sense but their sensuality. Not only was I frustrated last night at Vaca Profana, listening, or attempting to listen to a band play over the top of two women yakking but in El Calafate it seemed wrong that American Lawyers jet in for one day to tick the Glaciar off their 'Been There, Done It'  list whilst yakking full blast about where they were off to next.

As a City, El Calafate is obviously ruined. The old gravel road to the Glaciar now replaced with a superhighway. At least Men With Axes try to keep the glaciar pristine by insisting that you remove every shred of garbage and by totally forbidding smoking. But where were Men With Axes the day we went frente a frente with Mount Fitzroy and some idiot from New Jersey who could be heard yakking across the Moraine although he was just a tiny speck on the horizon, jumped into pristine Lago de Los Tres. (You are not allowed bathe in the waters and even when camping, have to take water from its source and wash 30 metres distant).

 El Chalten is going the same way. Construction of hotels everywhere. Ruta 40 currently being paved to facilitate more tourist buses.

 

I came across a note in my journal from travelling to Puerto Madryn in 2007 - 'What a disastrous testament to human existence Patagonia is. Rumbling across the esteppe with a vista of thousands of plastic bags trapped in the gorse, blown there by the wind and held captive forever'. At least El Calafate and El Chalten have banned plastic bags from shops now. What about the mega-pervasive mineral water bottles? Post Carneval at Guayleguaychu, the streets were a nuevo mountain of plastic. We don't need them. But then again we don't need most of the things we thing we can't live without.

   

 

Patagonia - Big, Big Ice

Not done with glaciares yet. After trekking Cerro Torre in El Chalten, I found an addiction to ice that I suspected I might have - it's always been a desire of mine to trek the Khumbu Icefall right after Everest Base Camp.

 

Taking the bus from El Chalten to El Calafate along Ruta 40 in the most pefect weather of the week was extreme frustration. The weather is Patagonia is so irrational, but this is what being a mountain lover is - learning patience for the elements. As one traveller pointed out - 'It hardly seems fair that we have suffered and punished our bodies only to have the most fantastic view from the bus.'

 

It was a view from the Gods. No I didn't snap it. I refuse to snap through bus windows - It means I doubt a return some day.

 

El Calafate was conquered after a bus malfunction. This town exists solely for tourism and man does it show. The road though town choked with tour buses. The sidewalks rammed with souvenir tat and excursion booking agencies. If you aren't one of the viejos taking a bus/boat tour, the choice is simple. Hielo y Aventura has a slamdunk monopoly all over the Perito Moreno Glaciar and getting on top of it is only possible through them. In fact there are no options to do anything in El Calafate unless you do it through an agency - One day even breathing will require a middle man.

 

There is 'Mini-Trekking' around 460 pesos or 'Big Ice' at 520. Along the lines of 'If you aren't living on the edge, you're taking up too much space', we went for more Big Ice. Desperate to get hands on axes again.

 

I don't like to begin my day at 7am sitting on a bus driving around hotels picking up 18 other tourists but once dropped on the terraces in front of Glacier Perito Moreno before the hoardes of viejos arrived, my mood improved. The Glaciar is one of the few things in life that is still truly gob-smacking.

It's fifteen minutes there, then 'Back on the Bus' to the port for a ten-minute boat ride across a branch of Lago Argentino and onto the edge of the Glaciar where you first meet Men With Axes. Are mountain Guides the new Air Hostesses - you  have to be cute to qualify? And are they paid extra to flirt so uncontrollably?

 

As we began our ascent across the Moraine, my heart was pounding and I was having trouble breathing and it had absolutely nothing to do with the climb.

 

As with Cerro Torre, a steep ascent through the tree line, a steep descent and you're on the ice. Harnessed up and crampons on. Although Big Ice is only recommended for people up to the age of 45, unlike Cerro Torre, I would really term this a pussy hike. The eighteen Americans on the tour were trawling all over the place like ADD kids off meds and the four Men With Axes were constantly hacking staircases into the side of the ice pinnacle and hauling them up by the harness. They straddle every crack and crevasse and hand/haul you across, often with some atorrante comment to cheer you on as you pass.

It is however fantastic. Only poets have words to describe it and I don't think Lord Byron made it down here.

 

Watching the Mountain Guides forge ahead to check for fissures made me wish one would open up and swallow these eighteen others - Certain of whom had flown into El Calafate for one day to 'do' Big Ice - and leave me alone with the creaking glaciar, the shifting light patterns and the most beautiful man in the world.

 

'Giddy'. my Companera del Crimenes called me. Indeed we both were. Stimulated by the earth's natural gifts and the immense range of emotion they are capable of gouging out of you.

 

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this mass tourism across the World's great places. It seems that although the Glaciar is huge and forever, we are systematically destroying her.

Fortunately on the return boat, the Men With Axes brng you back to earth with a couple of shots of whisky on the rocks. The purest rocks you will ever see.

Morose Monday - Emotional Unavailability Part 4999

The air in Buenos Aires is like inhaling leek soup and where are the Men with Axes who can trip up and down a vertical glaciar pinnacle on two spikes smoother than a milonguero slips a new turista into his embrace.

 

I don't think I can live any more surrounded by men in plastic hairbands and bagged shorts who think shopping at Nike is exercise. Men should be outside reading ice caves for collapse not reading texts and downloading ringtones.

And when it comes to dealing with emotional unavailability and heartbreak - I recommend a week or two in Patagonia in the company of men with axes while stretching body to its upper limits. The Mountain God pictured above asked me why do women always complain about Atorrantes (hmmm, let's say bullshitters but divertido) yet those are the men they always chase after. He also said that the women they like are also a little atorrante - free, funny, full of life. Ladies we need to relax.

Ice Trek Cerro Torre

 It was a relief to escape the constant tourist buses juggernauting around El Calafate and take a tourist bus up 'mythical' Ruta 40 to El Chalten. We had barely stepped down at Rancho Grande (no terminal in Chalten) when the wind kicked across the mountains and blew me and my pack off the pavement. Wind is a whipping theme in Patagonia - it makes the rain pummel horizontally and renders high tech waterproof gear redundant, every taped seam a meagre challenge.

It took a couple of hours to navigate the trekking agencies surfing the main street but it was worthwhile as prices differ dramatically. Although trekking the mountains requires only a good map - to get on top of the glaciar you need to go with mountain guides.

  Casa de Guias was charging almost half the price of the other agencies to go out to Cerro Torre so we booked with them and staggered into the village at 7am the following morning, a little traumatized in the stomach area from the guiso de lentejas we had loaded up with at dinner the night before. I had images from the Inca Trail and from a Nile felucca, of once again dealing with dysentry behind a very small shrub as the Mountain Guide looked off into the hills pretending deafness.

 

A three hour hike under an almost full moon brought about amnesia as the mountain gradually drew back the curtains on her grandeur. How Gonzalo and Martin must have been amused at the turistas snapping away unaware of how much more impressive a sight was waiting just a short Tirolesa across the river, an hour across the moraine and a strenuous vertical ascent through the tree line and descent aside the glaciar before we put on crampones and stepped onto the ice.

It would be torturous prose to write about mountains and glaciares in Patagonia. Some things simply defeat language.

 

We hiked straight up and down ice pinnacles imagining we were on the ice field of Everest. There is a strange silence on the glaciar apart from when an avalanche comes down the mountain and the light changes constantly causing camera neuroses. I often left mine on auto-focus as it was impossible to tell. The white of the ice is often blue. The water on the glaciar is the clearest and most delicious gift on earth. It brings tears to my eyes remembering how the earth manages to maintain majesty in the face of wanton human destruction.

 

The return was arduous. It was heaven to sit down at base camp and eat a pile of cookies and tough to get up for another three hours of descent - even shallow was agony on the shin splints. The 12 hour trek was delicious torture. It took every fibre in my body as we came in like marathon runners desperate to get across the finish line. That night we gingerly made it up the wind tunnel main street to Mi Viejo and had a huge ensalada completa with Patagonian lamb on the parilla - never had food tasted so good.

 

Patagonia is Pricey

Got back at midnight and scooched out for supplies this morning and forgot I did not have to pack them in my daysack. Palermo is looking like very good value in comparison to Patagonia sticker shock.

Yes we did walk across this - the Cerro Torre glaciare in El Chalten after a five hour walk-in and tirolesa.

Just gimme the damn axes Gustavo - I've got some climbing to do

More Carneval

Or just attempting to liven up another morose Monday

I had to make do with shooting from the fourth row of the VIP stands as the Editor of the paper fluffed up in organizing my press pass.

It was not easy after a number of tragos while wearing two feather headresses - the view from the Corso is certainly more dramatic

We Can't Hack It

Last night el Coronel took me to a swanky restaurant in Hollywood as I apparently need fattening up. This joint specialises in river fish on the parilla and we had an enormous bacu (big white fish) that followed me back from carneval. El Coronel kept asking me whether I still like Buenos Aires. It's a question I get asked a lot by Argentines who can't quite understand why anyone would choose to live here. I have to admit under the current circumstances of inflation and crime, I've been questioning myself lately.

But now we have the answer - according to a link which shall remain unreferenced, the many expats in Buenos Aires are 'Predictably wack dipshits who couldn't quite hack it financially or socially in their native lands'. Busted.

Are Argentine Men Narcissistic? (Emotional Unavailability Part 44432)

An interesting date was had last night just after our return from Carneval. I was a little confused as seven calls and thirteen texts from a man in one day was more than I had from the BD in five months. So I naturally assumed that this man was not emotionally unavailable and could even be a bit too available. There may well be another word for a man that tries to get a woman into bed when he doesn't even know her name. We had introduced ourselves when they stopped their bikes right in front of us at the riverside but maybe that was information deemed to inconsequential to take note of when you are busy being jocular about the fact that your own names are the same. (We promptly labelled them Thing 1 and Thing 2, however Dr Seuss does not translate in Argentina).

Last night, our date consisted of him asking what I wanted to do and when I said I had no Idea, not being the kind of girl who demands to be taken out for champagne and oysters, he suggested we go back to my place and 'chat'. We went along like this for a couple of hours, him suggesting we go to my place, until I realised that two rather important things I had told him had, as with my name, been disregarded. And then I realised that his wanting to get to know me meant enduring my conversation for as long as it took to get me into bed, but didn't necessarily mean he was listening.

Argentine men insist that they, unlike Europeans and frigid Americans, are full of passion. Great lovers. Great seducers of women - because they love them so much. I have found them passionate when it comes to getting what they want - somewhat lacking in the sensuality and technique departments. I'm starting to think that their passion derives from narcissism and they are simply in love with themselves.

Carneval Gualeguaychu Carnival

Just back from an exhilarating weekend -okay four days - in Gualeguaychu, Entre Rios province, four hours north of Buenos Aires but more like Cuba with its timewarp trucks and cobbled streets.

It really wasn't what I had been expecting.

Having been to Rio last year and Cafayate two weeks ago, I imagined that Guale would be something like Cafayate's neighbourhood corso but in the dromo. It turned out to be a lot more.

Getting to Guale is 37 pesos semi-cama from Retiro. We had a refuerzo (extra bus laid on due to too many kids heading off for a drunken weekend) whose air-con promptly expired. Strange to sit on a bus with sweat pouring down your back. The return was however, the normal business class service, although the DVD players broke down.

Hotels all full and all over-priced. Campsites all very full. Next time I would stay at the Embajador at 210 a double (versus 160 a dump) or the Aguay on the river for its rooftop pool. It was very hot in Guayle. Friday afternoon was spent locating our press passes in the corsodromo. Mine was lost - Pedro denied receiving any of the many messages from my editor. There were only back seats on the terraces available for 15 pesos at the entrada window but the very lovely girl (Everyone in Guayle was very nice - painfully obvious when you are accustomed to Portenos) gave us the private address for the family that owns the concession to the VIP area.

 We walked twenty blistering blocks while the sane people enjoyed their lengthy siesta to be met by a large notice on the door saying that entradas were available from 18.00 at the Corsodromo. Being foreigners we ignored the notice and knocked on the door and were knocked back.

Twenty more seething blocks. You get what I mean about the rooftop pool.

A plastic portacabin surrounded by fence was the VIP stand. It was 17.23. First in line - we let the sun pummel away at us. Had we been smarter, we could have acquired reservas for a table weeks before, but that was before the press pass fiasco and a desperate friend calling from the City.

T

he ticket sellers arrived but stood around gasbagging for forty minutes while a white plastic table was procured for them. Hot over-gaseosaed Portenos pulled up in BMWs and Audis beside us and pushed ahead looking for their tickets. FInally fourth row table for four - 280 pesos plus 40 pesos each entrada.

Saturday after partying on the Costanera the night before, we were not up to much so walked along to the beach. A beachbum town concocted around a river is a bizarre sight to behold, especially when the bums are rammed so tightly onto the sand that they are all standing up. We took the other side of the river to observe and listen to the insidious sound of Factoria (V. popular reggaeton group).

After a lengthy conversation about the dearth of spots to meet decent men in Argentina and just as I was explaining to my friend that it happens organically when you don't expect it rather than in bars or online - two chicos, no tan chico, happened along on motos offering to kill the afternoon with cold beers.

The carneval began at 23.30 - a mini Rio with what appeared to be the same floats from Rio 2008 although Guayle may simply have borrowed some influence. Much more comfortable - they ram too many into concrete amphitheatre steps in Rio - way more civilized with champagne and cocktail service and some very pretty boys on display, Guayle goes full-out for four hours. Then its back to the Costanera where the allnight party revs up and after another four hours, there are some pretty sorry states to behold passed out along the river, along with the intense smell of piss and a dump-load of plastic bottles along the road. The sunrise was beautiful on the water though and the residents were out cleaning up, happy that their pockets were full for another year.